At Egypt's suggestion, warring parties Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants have agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza starting tonight, Egyptian sources said, after Israel fired on Palestinian targets over the weekend, prompting the militants to fire long-range rockets. range over Israeli cities.

An Egyptian security source said Israel had agreed to the ceasefire. It is due to come into force at 19:XNUMX GMT. Cairo is still waiting for the Palestinian response.

- The Israeli side accepted the ceasefire, said an Egyptian official who wished to remain anonymous, but did not give a precise time frame for the ceasefire.

The ceasefire was brokered by Cairo, the first Arab country to sign peace with Israel in 1979.

Meanwhile, the fiercest conflict between the "Islamic Jihad" and Israel continues today after the short war last year.

The flare-up of the conflict, reminiscent of the prelude to previous wars in Gaza, has alarmed world powers.

However, the situation is relatively under control because Hamas, the ruling Islamist group in the Gaza Strip and a more powerful force than Iran-backed Islamic Jihad, has so far stayed out of the conflict.

Officials in Gaza said Israeli strikes had killed 31 Palestinians since Friday, at least a third of them civilians, including children.

Israeli officials dispute the figure and say several Palestinian children were killed Saturday night in Jabalia, in the north, by a stray rocket fired at Israel by Islamic Jihad, not the military.

Rockets from Gaza paralyzed much of southern Israel and sent residents in cities including Tel Aviv and Ashkelon to shelters.

Islamic Jihad this morning expanded its rocket attacks on Jerusalem in retaliation for the overnight killing of its commander in southern Gaza, the second such senior officer it has lost in the fighting.

Israel claims that its target is "Islamic Jihad", since it has killed 15 of its fighters since the beginning of the operation on Friday, and adds that it is waging a "preventive war" against the militants.

The Palestinian group retaliated by firing more than 160 rockets at Israeli territory, and most of the rockets were intercepted by the Israeli anti-missile shield "Iron Dome".

This is the worst conflict between the Jewish state and armed groups in Gaza since the May 2021 war that killed 11 Palestinians and 260 on the Israeli side in 14 days.